D&D 5E Mearl's Book Design Philosophy

[Zardnaar]

I've said this twice now, and it seems to be ignored. It's not just about money. Any time someone says something like that "They have the money, therefore they should churn out the material", it shows they don't understand project management.

I work in project management as my day job. Hopefully after this third time explaining, people will take it to heart as a factor worth considering.

Let's say WotC will release products that people want a lot faster than they are doing. They have to increase staffing significantly to do so. For sake of the argument, let's say they go from 20 people to 100 people, and release the following books within the first 2 years (like a lot of people are expressing, because they have said they want these by now):

PHB and PHB2
DMG
MM, and MM2
Ravenloft setting/campaign
Underdark setting/campaign
Grayhawk setting/campaign
Planescape setting/campaign
Spelljammer setting/campaign
Darksun setting/campaign
Ebberron setting/campaign
Dragonlance setting/campaign
FR setting/campaign

So what happens after that 2 year window? There's nothing left to create that would have the sales #s justifying the cost. I'll tell you what happens. All of that staff you just hired gets laid off and the D&D division becomes just a skeleton crew unless WoTC decides to make a 6th edition. And I for one would NOT want talk about a 6e only 2 years into 5e simply because they already burned through all the 5e products a majority of people will buy.

I've seen this happen before. It's a horrible way to run a business. Absolutely disastrous. Not only because you end up firing a bunch of people (which has a ton of related problems associated with this), but also because your quality will suffer. With a smaller team working on every project, it's easier to manage and you are ensured of getting consistent results and you know what to expect. With several different teams, you have inconsistency.

So yeah, as someone who's been doing project management for years, it seems to me WoTC is doing it just right.

I don't think anyone is asking for all of that this early. 2 years in it would be nice to have.

1 Campaign setting thats not FR (or even FR come to think of it)
1 Splatbook of mechanics.

1 Campaign setting every 2 years for the "big 5" should also be doable, and every other year they could put out either another splat book or UA type book.

So in 10 years time you would have 5 settings, 3 player splat books, a UA type splat for the DM+ 1 more and that does not count adventures or MM type books that do not really bloat the edition.

I have stopped buying the adventures myself because I already have 4 of thier books and have not played them.

I don't think 1 book a year that is not an adventure is to unreasonable its 1/12th of the 3E and 4E schedule.

SCAG exists but I owuld rather have two books a FR campaign setting and a dedicated player type book.

Psionic Book
Complete Combat
Complete Magic (new magic items and archetypes for the classes)
5 Settings
Unearthed Arcana/Book of Options
Book of Races

That is 10 years right there. If they wanted to do two books a year add this lot in.

MM2
MM3
Fiend Folio
Manual of the Plane
Complete Book of Tactics (Mass combat+other tactical stuff they talked about)
Advanced Players Guide Type Book (new classes/archetypes, Races)
Environment Book (Water/Snow/Desert)
Epic Level Handbook (stuff for level 15-20 PCs)
Worldbuilders Handbook (running domains, hexcrawls, designing a world etc)
A compendium (spells, magic items etc)

 

[Maxperson]

"General release" is an odd term to use. It sounds more like the scope of the release. Something released to general audiences (or the general public) rather than a limited release like a game store or web exclusive. I'd use "general release" to describe most of their products except stuff like the Elemental Evil Player Companion or Cloud Giant's Bargain, which are "limited release".


But your usage I've been assuming you're using "general release" to mean "setting neutral". Or something combination of "setting neutral" and "fluff light". But that's a personal usage limited to you, which inherently makes it awkward to understand.

Yes. I want them not to be tied to a setting like the 1e, 2e, and 3e general releases were not truly tied to a setting.

However... few D&D releases are truly setting neutral. 4e assumed the Nerath/Nentir Vale setting while 3e has Greyhawk as the default setting. The Realms setting is a little more obvious in a product like SCAG, but that book did include advice on converting the provided subclass options to other setting.
And mechanics, by their very nature, are setting neutral. SCAG can say whatever it wants about the lore of bladesingers, but you can do what you want with the class. I adopted that subclass and made it an integral part of my world: an elite order of wizard-knights serving the Queen of the elven court. SCAG made my homebrew world richer and more interesting.

No. 3e was not set in Greyhawk with their general releases, no matter what the official default setting was listed as. The entirety of the Greyhawk setting consisted of a small list of gods in the PHB. That's not enough to qualify as a specific setting.

I asked for specifics. That's as general as you can get.

If they want to pay me to come up with specific rules, I'll do it. If you want to pay me to do it, I will. However, I'm not going to spend many hours of work coming up with a bunch of rules just because you ask me to. Those categories are good enough.

Also, when you look at the amount of space optional rules take up in the DMG, it actually isn't a lot. There's not *that* many desirable or useful optional rules or subsystems. Like any other type of new rules content, you need a finite amount before additional content becomes superfluous.
Plus, optional rules are content that will always see limited use in campaigns. Because you only typically change optional rules at the start of a campaign. They're not something you can easily add halfway through a campaign.

Yes, the number of optional rules in this "modular" game was very disappointing. I will agree with you that you generally don't switch rules mid campaign, but I have seen it done. I also play multiple campaigns in an edition, so it's not as if rules can't be changed in-between.

Additionally… for players, how is having a book full of optional rules fundamentally different from a book full of flavour text? It's still content that is not usable.

How is it not usable?

They'd be at least 160 pages. So just two of them would very much have "hundreds of pages".
The only way to avoid releasing "hundreds of pages" of new mechanics would be to limit the crunch content to a smaller number of pages and fill the rest with fluff. But that's the kind of book you sound like you're uninterested in.

Yes, two books of 160 pages would be years worth of releases. Not a big deal. Especially when you consider that a lot of these general release books are filled with explanations for the new rules, so it's mostly flavor anyway.

Money doesn't enter into it. You can't buy more hours in the week.
Besides, D&D has a set operational budget. They have a cap on the money they can spend. Because WotC is a business out to make money and not a charity doubling as a book publisher. They're not going to increase the operational budget without a significant increase in profits. Even just recouping those expenses isn't enough: they need to make *more* money.
A crunch heavy splatbook isn't necessarily going to sell significantly more copies that a crunch light splatbook. The last two books sold very, very well for WotC. Spending more money to hire more developers and freelancers for no related increase in profits is wasting money. And that's bad business.

Money absolutely does play into it. The amount of money it takes to hire a few new writers is infinitesimal compared to their profits. And a few general releases will absolutely make enough profit to warrant the hirings.

Kinda. But they did so through smaller focused books that spread out the content. Rather than release "Complete Heroes" that covered all four major roles, they released the four books, likely with a significant amount of padding.

That is sufficient.

Do you think people will be happy if they released a class focused book every year? If arcane spellcasters had to wait three years for their book while WotC worked through the divine, roguish, and martial classes? (Would *you* be willing to wait those three or four years for any support for your class of preference?) Heck, just asking people to wait four months for all three core books almost caused rebellion. There's also the risk of priorities changing at WotC and those products being altered or restructured before completion; WotC has a terrible track record of changing or cancelling those types of product lines before completion. Or deciding that they want to "shake up the line" and do something different rather than release a book identical to what they've done two or three times prior but with different classes.

They will be happier than not getting them at all.

For those reasons, for annual products it's generally better to release an all-in-one books that appeal to all types of character. But that just means pushing things to "fall apart" amounts of content that much faster.

All in one books have to be so large as to be priced out of being bought by most consumers, or else they don't cover anything sufficiently well. You end up disappointing more people that way.

It's not about books the same size as the PHB. Did you even READ what I wrote? Most of the PHB is classes, rules, and other content. A book 1/2 the size of the PHB could have close to the same level of options (subclasses, races, feats, spells, etc). A book just 160 page length could double the options available for most characters.
Even if you filled half the book with optional rulesets and half with crunch, that just delays the doubling by another year.

Could, but won't. History has shown that splat books don't put all that much crunch into them. They will be padded with a lot of fluff to go along with it.

BUT IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE A TON OF BOOKS!!!
*sigh* One last time…
It doesn't need to be forty books like 3e. Or twenty books like 4e. Or ten books like Pathfinder. It really only takes a ones or two large all-encompassing book. Two books aimed entirely at players.
That's it.

And the world COULD end tomorrow. Stop crying that the sky will fall if they release general content when the facts just don't back you up. History shows that they won't release books in the manner that you say they COULD.

 

[Parmandur]

Actually, Nerath was an historic fallen empire that might be dropped into any setting as background, and the Nentir Vale was just an example of a small heroic-tier area.

The whole 'points of light' thing was a philosophy, not a setting, even though it got called PoLland, and 4e was, indeed, setting neutral. So, really, in spite of having a supplement called Greyhawk, was 0D&D and AD&D. 3e defaulted to Greyhawk, 5e, apparently to FR, and the RPG did living Greyhawk and living FR that pushed those settings, respectively.



So it's not so much that D&D hasn't been setting neutral much of the time, it's that the fans don't accept it, and imagine a default or standard setting even when there isn't one. It looks like WotC has figured that out, with 5e, and settled on FR as the default. Given the popularity of the novels, it makes sense. I can't stand it, myself, but it doesn't matter, I've never been big on published settings, and it's easy enough to ignore.



It's really so easy to genercise like that. Outside of FR, call a PDK a 'bannerette,' done.



Yes. Just start with the least-developed options first. So skipped PH1 classes (Warlord, Psion is you stretch the point), then under-served 5e PH classes (Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, Sorcerer), then other skipped classes (Shaman, Artificer, Avenger, etc), then, 5+ years out, maybe, classes that are already very option-heavy, like the Cleric & Wizard.



And, the 5e PH /is/ the Arcane spell-casters' book. ;P



I've waited over two, so far, and haven't started nerdraging or edition-warring yet.

Points of Light as a philosophy captures how we used "Greyhawk" in my college group during 3.x, really. From their comments, it seems they discovered that lots of people follow that philosophy, the second biggest chink of gamers after FR fans, but are fine cribbing FR, or whatever specific thing WotC releases. So, by using an example setting like FR, they hit the largest group, and the second largest group of players.
[MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] has stated a preference for absolutely avoiding new classes as much as possible. We know if three in the works: Mystic, neo-Ranger and Artificer. That's it for the edition, per the model in use; everything else is subclasses of the basic types.

 

[Zardnaar]

Early Mystara was also PoL as well then they fleshed it out later.

 

[Jester David]

Money absolutely does play into it. The amount of money it takes to hire a few new writers is infinitesimal compared to their profits. And a few general releases will absolutely make enough profit to warrant the hirings.

How???
Where will this magical increase in profits come from? Will their once per year accessory sudddenly be selling twice as many copies? Are there a hundred thousand D&D fans waiting in the wings for crunch focused books?
Staffing is very expensive. You're paying a salary for a year plus benefits and health care.
A single writer will cost WotC $75,000 per year. Easily. To make that much money back to even cut even, they'd have to sell 10% more copies of their book. And they'd more than want to just cut even. And those sales would have to be at least maintained every year, if not increase.

Could, but won't. History has shown that splat books don't put all that much crunch into them. They will be padded with a lot of fluff to go along with it.

...
Gave you looked at many 2e, 3e, 4e, or Pathfinder splatbooks?
If that's true, what are you asking for, other than more generic fluff?

And the world COULD end tomorrow. Stop crying that the sky will fall if they release general content when the facts just don't back you up. History shows that they won't release books in the manner that you say they COULD.

History shows that once fighter players have a book with a significant number of new fighter options, be it Complete Fighter's Handbook, Complete Warrior, Martial Power, or Ultimate Combat, they don't generally buy a second.

 

[Tony Vargas]

History shows that once fighter players have a book with a significant number of new fighter options, be it Complete Fighter's Handbook, Complete Warrior, Martial Power, or Ultimate Combat, they don't generally buy a second.

I'm not aware of any sales figures quite that specific. But I'm sure a lot of us were delighted to have Complete Warrior after having been suckered into Sword & Fist, and happy to see Bo9S later, as well. Likewise, Martial Power 2 definitely did not suck.

Not only is the fighter perennially popular, it, and non-supernatural PC options in general, is one area where 5e has the most room for growth & improvement - the most unexplored design space, parsecs of it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I don't think anyone is asking for all of that this early. 2 years in it would be nice to have.

1 Campaign setting thats not FR (or even FR come to think of it)
1 Splatbook of mechanics.

1 Campaign setting every 2 years for the "big 5" should also be doable, and every other year they could put out either another splat book or UA type book.

So in 10 years time you would have 5 settings, 3 player splat books, a UA type splat for the DM+ 1 more and that does not count adventures or MM type books that do not really bloat the edition.

I have stopped buying the adventures myself because I already have 4 of thier books and have not played them.

I don't think 1 book a year that is not an adventure is to unreasonable its 1/12th of the 3E and 4E schedule.

SCAG exists but I owuld rather have two books a FR campaign setting and a dedicated player type book.

Psionic Book
Complete Combat
Complete Magic (new magic items and archetypes for the classes)
5 Settings
Unearthed Arcana/Book of Options
Book of Races

That is 10 years right there. If they wanted to do two books a year add this lot in.

MM2
MM3
Fiend Folio
Manual of the Plane
Complete Book of Tactics (Mass combat+other tactical stuff they talked about)
Advanced Players Guide Type Book (new classes/archetypes, Races)
Environment Book (Water/Snow/Desert)
Epic Level Handbook (stuff for level 15-20 PCs)
Worldbuilders Handbook (running domains, hexcrawls, designing a world etc)
A compendium (spells, magic items etc)

Here's the thing though. Based on the discussions over the past several months, no one agrees on what should be release first. It's like I said earlier, if they release a psionic book, you'll be happy and not complain, but the person who wants new classes/races will complain because they still haven't gotten theirs yet.

Everyone seems to think their personal wish list is how it should be done, and that's inherently contradictory. In order to give people what they want, you'd have to speed up the release schedule a lot. And that results in the problems I mentioned in the post you quoted.

It goes back to what I said earlier. When people say they want a faster release, they don't really mean a faster release, but they want their desired products first. The actual release schedule doesn't matter.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If they want to pay me to come up with specific rules, I'll do it. If you want to pay me to do it, I will. However, I'm not going to spend many hours of work coming up with a bunch of rules just because you ask me to. Those categories are good enough.

Sorry, but I gotta call you out on this. First, you complain you're not getting what you want because "It's not splat.' When it's pointed out how what is being put out IS splat, you say "that doesn't do me any good, so I don't count it. I'm not spending my money on something I won't use most of." so then you're asked for specifics of what you would consider worthy of your $, and you give generics, which helps no one. When asked to clarify specifically what you're asking for, you come up with a reply like this.

So from where I"m sitting? It looks an awful lot like you're just wanting to complain without even bothering to talk about a solution. Just complaining for complaint's sake. And being awfully aggressive at anyone who tried to engage in a conversation with you.

"I want X"
"Here is X"
"That's bad. I won't find any use of it."
"So what do you want?"
"You're not paying me to tell you."

Awfully convenient to complain about how something sucks, but refuse to say what you actually want.

 

[Zardnaar]

Here's the thing though. Based on the discussions over the past several months, no one agrees on what should be release first. It's like I said earlier, if they release a psionic book, you'll be happy and not complain, but the person who wants new classes/races will complain because they still haven't gotten theirs yet.

Everyone seems to think their personal wish list is how it should be done, and that's inherently contradictory. In order to give people what they want, you'd have to speed up the release schedule a lot. And that results in the problems I mentioned in the post you quoted.

It goes back to what I said earlier. When people say they want a faster release, they don't really mean a faster release, but they want their desired products first. The actual release schedule doesn't matter.

Psionics has usually been a bit more niche but it has often been out wihin two years of the core book.

So generic splatbook year 1, psionics year two would be how I ouwld have done it. The Elemental guide and SCAG could have been in the same book add some more stuff and you have a 5E Advanced players Guide and psionics could be coming out now for example had they devoted resources to it.

They are probably around a year behind that scenario but one would think they could have had 1 source book out by now devoted to PC options it has been 2 years. There is slow and then very slow so if people are getting impatient/upset I think their concerns are legit.

Personally I am getting sick of seeing Bards and Paladins they are popular classes.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*